Monarawila Keppetipola (died 1818) was the Disawa of Uva and the principal leader of the Uva–Wellassa rebellion of 1817–18 against British rule.
The Disawa was a senior provincial governorship in the Kandyan kingdom, an office held by the Radala service nobility.1 Keppetipola was sent by the British to suppress the rising in Uva; on arriving he joined it instead, handing over his weapons to the rebels and taking command.
The rebellion was put down with exceptional severity — crops and villages destroyed, cattle killed, the male population of parts of Uva and Wellassa devastated. Keppetipola was captured, tried and beheaded at Bogambara in November 1818. His skull was taken to Britain and held at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh until 1954, when it was returned to Sri Lanka; it rests at the Kandy Museum. He is among the most widely honoured figures of Sri Lankan resistance to colonial rule.